orange dinosaur sweater

Taylor noticed Mom was knitting a baby blanket for someone's baby, and decided he needed her to knit him a sweater. one with a big dinosaur on it. of course Mom couldn't pass up a challenge like that!!
I think he might like it a little bit. Great haircut Mom!

Duvall vs Cabo

Winner = Cabo

toes and snows

Today I met Sarah & Reagan for pedicures to get ready for our big trip next week. We all got 'beach toes' - which is what I call getting flowers painted on the big toe... like this:
yup. that's my toes. beachy right? oh what's that in the background? SNOW!! how freaking beachy is that? SNOW!
See the contrast of vibrant green grass to sticky, yucky white snow? that's how you know it's not supposed to be snowing! it only stuck for about an hour, but it was depressing. but it's 89 degrees in Cabo today. one more week.
in the meantime, some espresso cupcakes will help us pass the time.

pressure washers and sprouts

Our patio was looking like death! we get a lot of moisture here and it really shows at the beginning of spring when our patio was soggy and greenish - yuck!! Today we had some guys come to the house and clean out our rain gutters, treat the roof for moss, and pressure wash the patio. they were excellent - thanks Sarah for recommending them!! I completely forgot to take a before picture, but the after pics are great.

I'm really happy with the results. the dogs are happy too.
This is my blooming tree in the back corner of the yard. I love this tree. more flowers are opening and it's just gorgeous.
Cari has suggested it could be a crab apple tree, and I can only hope that it's not. I'm not a fan of apple trees in my yard (but the dogs love it)

now for the front yard
Reagan gave me this planter and it's really nice on the front porch! Since the bulbs are forced I don't know if they will come up a 2nd time, but I'm going to bring them into the garage and hope for the best when they are finished here.
so pretty!

These are the 9 sprouting bulbs! some are daffodils and some are crocuses.
I'm pretty sure 1-4 are daffodils, and 5-8 are crocuses, but I don't know what the heck 9 is...

I made chili last night for dinner. it was really good. no pics of the chili though.
mmmmm..... nothing better than fresh guacamole.
Sarah brought me this sparkling pear wine because it has a dancing deer on the label.
Baby Aubrey never cries. ever.

I spent some time in the yard today. it was really beautiful outside, although still a bit chilly. We had a lot of blackberries creeping over the fence so I had to get rid of those. ouchy! they are loaded with thorns. Things are starting to bloom so I got some pics.
I think this is an azalea bush. it's the first thing to really bloom. very pretty.
some of the flowers up close.
I don't know what this tree is called but I love it. there's only a few of these little pink flowers open so far but the entire tree is covered with buds so it will be all flowers soon. it's my favorite tree even when it's not in flower because the leaves are a really beautiful red color all summer.
I don't know if this one is going to flower or if it's just leaves, but it's going to open up soon.
these are pretty blue ground cover flowers.
there were bees happily enjoying this shrub. I tried to get a good photo of a bee but this is the best I could do. they don't hold still for long.
I just bought this hydrangea yesterday. I'm hoping that it will survive if I plant it in the back yard. I think it's too cold to do it yet though.
so last fall I ordered bulbs from holland. They came in the mail just after I hurt my back, so I wasn't able to plant them in the yard, then it got too cold and I forgot about them. a few weeks ago I found them and planted them. I figured they were all dead because nothing was happening, but today I found this!! yay!!! let's hope I get more than one (I planted maybe 50 bulbs)
it's not a blog post without a picture of a dog. here's Danger doing what he does best.

save your thumbs

this is my public service announcement - be careful with your thumbs. protect them at all costs. you don't realize how important they are until it's too late.
immediately after the incident. at this point, cleaning the wounds and stopping the bleeding are our top priority.
bleeding stopped, now a good coating of Neosporin and some ice.
2 days later, now taking antibiotics. I believe at this point the thumb is saved, let's hope for the best. I may still retire as a hitchhiker though.
on a happier note, it didn't rain yesterday, so we got to enjoy some fun in the yard. Ruby has her favorite stuffy, Danger's all time favorite toy is a dryer ball.
here's a blurry action shot of the dogs playing. Sushi waits until someone catches the dryer ball, then she tries to steal it.

Planet Unicorn Heyyyyyyy

can you believe it!?! our dreams have come true! our prayers have been answered! there's a new episode of Planet Unicorn!!!

Poor Alex doesn't have internet for 2 more weeks, he's going to have to wait.

chickens and crabs

nothing feels more like spring like baby chicks! Sarah got 2 last week. in these pictures they are a little over a day old. they are friendly and like to be held but you kinda have to keep them tight in your hand so they don't jump out.
Andrew's holding the little blonde girl. she doesn't have a name yet.
this is Jeff holding Penelope the 3rd. When she is full grown she will have gorgeous black and white striped feathers. there are fancy names for these chicken breeds but I can't remember what they are.
this pic is from last month actually - we went to the Crab Pot restaurant for dinner. they dump the contents of a giant pot onto your table - inside - shrimp, mussels, potatoes, crab legs, and corn. you do a lot of smashing with a mallet. the bibs are important.

Creme Brule Cupcakes

I got this recipe from one of my favorite blogs, how to eat a cupcake. the best part of creme brule is the crunchy burned sugar on top, sadly this recipe didn't require any torching. I think I will modify it though the next time I make it so I can light something on fire!
the batter - note the carmelly goodness on the top of the beater.
finished cupcakes. the cake is perfect in every way.
this is a brown sugar meringue buttercream. it's as delicious as it looks/sounds.
the finished cupcake. Andrew did some of the piping for me. yummy!

kitchen before / after

a few weeks ago the dishwasher stopped working -- it would work ok but you would have to run it twice to get things truly clean. and the oven never got to the true temperature. so it was time for new appliances.
this is before -- before we got the house even. this is the realtor photo. notice all the photos on the fridge!! I really love the plants on top of the cabinets - I think I'm going to go get some of those.
this is how it looked before the new appliances - we painted the walls the same nice brown color as the rest of the house, which goes perfectly with the ceramic tile.
this is the dishwasher - we got the kind that has all the buttons hidden inside it. you can put an entire bottle of dish-washer-fluid inside it and it will automatically dispense it with each wash, and then it will let you know when you are running out. space-dishwasher!
here are the rest of the appliances. the double-oven is awesome. it has 5 burners. the bottom oven is the same size as a full sized normal oven, and then the top oven is the size of that drawer that you never use for anything. the microwave has the vent in it. the fridge isn't the one we originally wanted, which had a screen saver that you could upload photos to. we got that one into the house and it fit in the space but you couldn't open the right door - so sadly it had to go back and we got this one, which is similar but a little narrower.

I know how much everyone loves seeing new pics of my little Danger (who is so much bigger now -- 19 lbs this morning)
this is his new favorite toy. it's a dryer ball. we have 3 of them and he's decided that they are way more interesting than any of the numerous dog toys he has to choose from. guess I have to use dryer sheets after all.

this is the rubber chicken that he never plays with anymore, now that he's discovered the joy of the dryer ball.

running for cheese

it rains a lot here and sometimes you can't get the dogs to go outside to play, but they still need their exercise! Andrew and I put this together last night - well Andrew got a little carried away with the production.
and here's another pic of my beautiful little monster. he's almost 6 months old now.

chocolate lava cupcake

Hollie visited last week and we made some chocolate lava cupcakes from my 500 Cupcakes cookbook (which I love)
the picture is too good to be true - a rich dark chocolate cake with a gooey filling. yummy!
we didn't exactly follow the instructions - it called for self rising flour, which I didn't have, so I used regular flower and added a bit of baking powder. don't do that. it doesn't work.
they looked promising when coming out of the oven, smelled yummy...
the result - a dark chocolate cake with a gummy pasty center. still tasty with vanilla ice cream, but not the result I wanted.

Chocolate Lava Cupcake = failure.